three years in denmark

Thursday, March 12, 2015

morning walk

william is the studious one, getting to school by 8 to dutifully tend to his "lectures." (okay, one-third of that sentence is truth, one-third myth, the other third pure conjecture.)

henry is the guy who can take his time getting to school on a morning like this...

bathed in light (i.e. overexposed)...

helping me over the cattle grid..

on the other side i take a look at the swamp and the bark on the fallen trees that's much mossier than this picture shows...

and i look back and he's helping his dad across...

made it.

a cool spring so far, but plenty of sunshine. (one half of that sentence you'd expect, the other you feel lucky to have.)

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

lapel flower

it might be early where you are, but it's bedtime in these parts. so let me just give you a little taste of our bike ride home today...

"mama, you have to smell these! they smell perfect!"

next stop-- crocuses. "mama, look at how beautiful!"

and lastly, picking up the big brother...

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

right place, right time, or just place, time

you know when you forget to show up to something and serendipity steps in and places right where you were supposed to be? this has happened to us twice now with community meetings. we're on a cooking team and an outdoor work group in our co-housing neighborhood. in the past three months we've just happened to stumble upon work-group meetings just getting started. meetings that were on our calendar but that somehow slipped our attention. greg's at one now. he'd gone to lock up the common house after our neighbor stopped by to pass the key on to us. every week a different household is responsible for locking it each night, so we only have this task about once every 27 weeks. tonight just so happened to be the first night of our week and greg just happened to decide to turn off the lights and lock it now, rather than waiting until bed. i sat here trying to decide why it was taking him so long and if i needed to organize a search party when i suddenly remembered about the meeting (which was taking place in the common house). a few minutes after that he came back in to let me know about it (in case i was still considering that search party) and to tell me he'd pretended to need to run back to the house for something. now he's back over there.

oh the things you'll do. or at least we'll do.

and for some strange reason, it makes me think about something i read tonight. henry is all about his thomas the tank engine collection of stories. it's a big, blue hardcover book with all the original stories in it. this is what he wants to listen to every night. we read them in no particular order. tonight he wanted to know if the author-- rev. w. awdry (wilbert awdry)-- was dead, because he usually wants to know if particular people are alive or dead. i told him the author had died and he wanted to know how. i said i didn't know but that we could read about him in the back of the book if he was interested. he was, at least for awhile, so we read some of the essay included in the collection about him. one thing i noticed was that the author created the first of these stories as a way to entertain his son while he was confined to his bed with the measles. now, this is not intended to start a debate about vaccines, but it just struck me as interesting that all that is thomas the tank engine and the love of so many four-year olds out there, may never have existed if his son weren't sick in bed with the measles. that's it. just interesting. not sure how it relates to greg and the meeting. but it also reminds me of this.. maybe you've heard it... (it's written in many forms all over the internet. i'm not sure now from what site i got this specific version)

"...an old Chinese farmer lost his best stallion one day and his neighbor came around to express his regrets, but the farmer just said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The next day the stallion returned bringing with him 3 wild mares. The neighbor rushed back to celebrate with the farmer, but the old farmer simply said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The following day, the farmer's son fell from one of the wild mares while trying to break her in and broke his arm and injured his leg. The neighbor came by to check on the son and give his condolences, but the old farmer just said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The next day the army came to the farm to conscript the farmer's son for the war, but found him invalid and left him with his father. The neighbor thought to himself, "Who knows what is good and what is bad."

here is my picture for the day...

Monday, March 9, 2015

chop chop

stairs!

today's photo... from the archives

also, chopping lots of onions;

turning bread dough into flutes. can you call them that?

(i helped prepare dinner tonight for the community.)

washing dishes;

(and i helped with the clean-up.)

cleaning out the refrigerator drawers;

(our refrigerator drawers)

trips to the compost;

(in conjunction with tonight's dinner and the great refrigerator clean-up of 2015)

laundry-- always laundry;

and trying to make a piece of writing work (not this one) for some future post (not this blog);

(if anything ever becomes of it, i'll let you know.)

more 'neverending story'... i recommend it for kids who enjoy fantasy books.

that sums up my day, plus two cups of coffee-- which didn't take away my 'tired' headache. so i think that means i need to get to bed earlier tonight. but will i? we've been up watching old 'poirot' episodes on netflix. so i can probably go ahead and add that to today's list--

watching poirot past my bedtime.

goodnight!

Sunday, March 8, 2015

riding in the car to old trees

yesterday's picture

our original plan for today had been to take the train to the southern part of our island and visit an old, tumble-down castle. but then we were able to borrow a car so instead we went north to a place called jægerspris (roughly: "yayrs-prees) on the northern part of the roskilde fjord. its forest is supposed to house one of the oldest trees on the european continent (an oak estimated at 1500-2000 years old). it's also got a castle (not tumbled down, but certainly old. it was built in the 13th century, but added on to and renovated through the years). we didn't have a map so, upon arriving in the town, weren't really sure where to go to find the tree. we found the castle (not open until easter) and a culture center and bought a map there for 10 kroner and realized we were pretty far from the trees. also, we'd bought lunch at a nearby grocery store so the boys had already been in and out of the car once. so, we decided to just eat there and hike around in the area by the culture center instead of getting them back into the car. (we're not quick, or necessarily all that patient, with the car seat straps these days.) at one point we tried to find the fjord, and you'll see greg and william looking at it from the top of the hill, but short of walking through a farmer's field, there was no real way to get down to it. maybe we would have walked through it, had the farmer not been out on the tractor. so we walked back to the car and drove to a little beach before heading home and eating chicken noodle soup. that's essentially what you'll see here (sans soup).

the car...